I participated in an Influencer Activation on behalf of Influence Central and Kangu. I received a promotional item to thank me for my participation.

Many of us have the luxury of great prenatal care. We give birth in nice clean hospitals and postpartum care sometimes doesn’t feel like a necessity, but rather just a reassurance because we know we’ve taken our vitamins, eaten healthy, read every baby book cover to cover and made sure to pick out the best obgyn in our city.

Mothers in other countries do not always get those luxuries. In fact, each day, 800 women and 8,000 newborns die because they lack access to basic healthcare services like a trained professional and a clean facility. They often die from easily preventable and treatable complications. That means 300,000 women per year are dying too soon- often leaving their children behind.

Because I am the mother to two children adopted from a “third-world country,” I felt a necessity to examine the issues that lead to children living in orphanages and consider my role and advocacy for family preservation. The root issue of the majority of children becoming parentless is poverty. One of the off-shoot issues of that is lack of maternal care.

In the adoption world, many of us crowd-fund to afford adoption. We gladly help those in our communities to be able to afford the high price tag of domestic or international adoption. I am a firm believer that while we should be supporting those in our adoptive communities, we also need to tackle the front end of the issue to help reduce the numbers of children living in orphanages in the first place.

Kangu is a non-profit organization with a dream for every woman to have a safe birth. Kangu is a crowdfunding platform that allows us moms, from our little corner of the world, to directly help put an end to preventable maternal and newborn deaths by contributing to life-saving health services to other moms just like us.

Anyone, anywhere can search Kangu and read the real life profiles of pregnant women in need and contribute to help her and her baby survive and thrive. These contributions allow services, provided by local medical partners, to be received by women before, during and after childbirth.

560 safe births have been funded so far. Be part of the solution. Find a mama to fund and give her access to a safe birth.

Enter below to win one of five $100 donations Influence Central will make to a Kangu mom on your behalf.

The ultimate Valentine’s Day dessert is of course strawberries and chocolate, so I wanted to make a yummy strawberry dessert (or snack!) that was light, but didn’t skimp on decadent flavors. You could really just eat a big bowl of this frozen Greek yogurt “bark” as I like to call it, or it’s a delicious addition on top of ice cream.

Prep time is simple. Simply spread strawberry-flavored Greek yogurt on a lined baking sheet, top with sliced strawberries, drizzle with Oppadipity by Litehouse Cheesecake Sweet Dip and finish with a drizzle of melted chocolate.

Hy-vee is a local grocery store here in Iowa that I’ve gone to for many years. Not only do they operate in Iowa, but there are over 230 grocery stores located in the Midwest including Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

I’m a firm believer that your average busy mom can make small changes in their everyday life that affect the world in a positive way. We all know that the largest group of consumers are moms and if we start changing where we spend our money, it can make difference.

Hy-Vee’s One Step program is a collection of everyday grocery items that donate a portion of proceeds to worthy causes. You don’t need to spend more money or go out of your way to buy something you wouldn’t normally buy. These are everyday items: potatoes, cereal, paper towels and bottled water.

One Step russet potatoes help fund community gardens that teach those in need the importance of nutritious food and the process of planting, tending and harvesting their own fruits and vegetables. Proceeds helped fund 240 community gardens in 2014.

One Step paper towels are made from recyclable materials and have funded the planting of 14,000 trees in a flood-damaged area in Iowa. Hy-vee will continue to work with the Arbor Day foundation to plant trees in neighborhoods and other public places.

Proceeds from One Step Shredded Wheat, which is packaged in a 100% recycled cardboard box, will go to help those struggling with food insecurities in the United States. More than $36,000 has been donated to Meals from the Heartland which amounts to 183,000 meals that have reached children and families across the Midwest.

My favorite One Step product is the lemon-flavored bottled water. These big 1 quart water bottles are 4/$5 and come in regular water, lemon, berry and cucumber. Hy-Vee partners with Rotary International to dig water wells for those who do not have safe drinking water. To date, 11 clean water projects have been completed from the proceeds of One Step water in South Africa, South Sudan, Lebanon, Tanzania, Nigeria, Haiti, Kenya and Chad.